Here is a startling comparison: a bag of cocaine can be sold to its user one time, and then its done. Yet think of how significant the global drug trade is, despite the fact it is trafficking in a single-use commodity.
In contrast, a five-year old taken into sex slavery can be sold over and over and over again…every night, for ten years. Is it any wonder the sex-trafficking industry is booming?
One reason for the global boom in the sale of children is simply that it is done in darkness. To enslave a child involves kidnapping him or her from their parents, relocating them to a different country, finding brothels where they activity can go undetected, and ultimately moving the child to the “end user” in yet another country. The crimes are as horrific as they are profitable, and so business is big, but largely ignored. It is not a topic of polite conversation.
A new movie, Sound of Freedom, hopes to change all that. In the theatres now, it tells the true story of a Homeland Security Special Agent who devoted his career to fighting pedophilia. In real life, the agent is Tim Ballard—perhaps you recognize his name. He has testified in front of congress, and his heroic exploits have been reported before the release of Sound of Freedom.
The movie choses not to tell the story of Ballard’s whole career, but rather one year of it. It opens with Ballard arresting one person for child pornography. That person flips—or rather is tricked—and arranges for Ballard to have a real-life encounter with a trafficked kid. Despite arresting more than 100 pedophiles, that child would be the first one he successfully rescued from slavery.
It turns out the child has a sister. The movie then follows Ballard’s attempts to rescue that girl, a task which is essentially impossible. The girl is a Honduran, supposedly kidnapped by Columbians and possibly trafficked to Russia. In short, about as far away from the jurisdiction of American Border Patrol as is possible.
Nevertheless, having rescued one, hearing “the sound of freedom” a child makes when freed from his captors is more addictive than a drug, and Ballard is hooked. Along the way, he makes some unlikely allies. A billionaire playboy. A Columbian cop. A former cartel boss who realized that the drugs he smuggled fueled the sex trade. The most intense scene in the movie comes when the drug lord explains why he decided to rescue children: he realized there is an intense darkness in the world, that he himself is that darkness, and that darkness must die. He understood that the darkness could die in two ways, both equally possible: he could commit suicide or devote his life to exposing evil. He put a gun to his head. “If there ever was a time to ask if God exists, that was it.”
I encourage men to watch this movie. I went with another pastor, and afterwards we decided it wouldn’t be good for our wives to see (nor do they have any desire to). The bottom line: it shows you the dark world of child pornography. It shows how the kids are stolen, how the photos are made, and the kind of person who views them. It does not show nudity or any sex acts. You don’t see what happens behind the closed curtains; that the curtains are closed at all is sufficient to make this movie incredibly dark.
Yet Sound of Freedom has an express goal: not to leave you in darkness. Darkness thrives when the lights are off, and this movie wants to shine the light in the darkest places imaginable. To that end, Sound of Freedom has succeeded in making two major points:
First: there is a one-to-one connection between child pornography and the trafficking of children. The movie makes clear that pornography has to come from somewhere. The people on the screen with the darkness in their eyes…they are slaves. Kids don’t willingly make pornography. The ones with videos online were kidnapped from their parents, and made to perform in the most heinous way imaginable, and those buying the porn are paying for the kidnapping of the children.
Second: our culture downplays the trafficking of children. This was a realization that was hard for me to grasp, but seems unavoidable. There are dozens of examples of why that is, and that can be topic for different post. Perhaps people don’t like how their politics abet the trafficking of children. Our culture generally views kids as a hindrance and sexual desires as amoral, so pedophilia is increasingly difficult to actually condemn. For now, Sound of Freedom brings the stories of these children to the foreground.
There is a scene in the movie where Ballard is planning an operation that if successful could save 50 kids. Yet for various reasons, there is internal resistance to the plan. Ballard rallies his troops by telling them, “Don’t think of the 50…think of only one of them,” then gives out a picture of the one that is motivating him.
That is what Sound of Freedom does. It takes the millions of slaves in the world, and convinces those watching: don’t even get motivated by the millions: look at this one girl.
I encourage you to see this movie in the theatre. At home there are distractions, pause buttons, and excuses to look away. It is well acted, fast-paced, has an amazing score, and is very well produced. Experience it on the big screen, and let the light shine into the darkness.
Jesse is the Teaching Pastor at Immanuel Bible Church in Springfield, VA. He also leads The Master’s Seminary Washington DC location.
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